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Nintendo shocks the gaming industry

Yes, it’s finally happened. Nintendo has finally decided to bring one of their beloved franchises over to a competitor’s console. This shock announcement was made today by Satoru Iwata in a seemingly innocuous interview featured in the Daily Yomiuri. When asked if there were any future plans for link beyond the new “realistic” Zelda coming out this year for the Game Cube, Iwata responded:

“The new [GameCube] Zelda will bring Link into a whole new world that will keep fans happy — especially those who wanted something different than the Wind Waker. Our current goal is to expand the Zelda fan base as much as possible. Creating this new Zelda is a step in that direction. We are also talking with Sony to bring a Zelda game to their PSP handheld. Many have shown concern for this decision, but we feel that the PSP is the perfect hardware for a new, realistic, handheld Zelda.”

The implications of this small bit of information are astounding. Does this mean that the GBA Next is not going to be as powerful as the PSP? Is it going to be released this fall like many have been speculating? Is this a one-shot only deal, or is Nintendo going to start feeding their AAA franchises to competitor systems on a more regular basis? These are all valid questions, and ones we simply don’t have the answer to right now. But, we will certainly update this remarkable story is more details emerge.